The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success

David Ponder, a 46-year-old executive, arrives home by taxi after a hostile corporate takeover eliminates his position at the Dallas chemical company where he worked for 23 years. Inside, he kneels beside the bed of his 12-year-old daughter, Jennifer Christine ("Jenny"), whose birthday he missed. His wife, Ellen, finds him and asks if he is all right. He answers, "No." Lying awake, David reflects on the choices that brought him here: a failed business venture, soured investments, and a decision not to take an early retirement package. The family faces a second mortgage, an unpaid car, and no savings.

Seven months later, David works a minimum-wage job while Ellen cleans houses. Their health insurance has expired, and when Ellen calls to say the doctor insists Jenny's tonsils must be removed at a cost of 1,100 dollars they cannot afford, the store owner fires David for taking the personal call. Driving his battered Dodge Colt, David spirals into despair, considering that his life insurance may be all he has left to offer. He accelerates past 90 miles per hour, screaming "Why me?" His car hits black ice on a bridge and careens toward a giant oak tree. Then there is nothing.

David awakens in an ornate room in Potsdam, Germany, on July 24, 1945, the site of the famous postwar Allied conference. Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, responds to David's cry with, "Why not you?" Truman explains that David has been chosen to travel through the ages, receiving at each destination one of seven "Decisions for Success." When David protests that he is ordinary, Truman replies, "He believes in you." Truman traces David's life choices, arguing that David's thinking governed every decision and that taking responsibility is the only basis for moving forward. He gives David a folded paper containing the First Decision: "The buck stops here," a declaration of personal responsibility and the resolve to see challenges as preparation for greatness.

The room distorts and David arrives in a vast hall where King Solomon, the ancient Israelite king renowned for his wisdom, adjudicates the famous dispute of two mothers claiming the same living baby. Solomon counsels David to "seek wisdom," warning that tolerating mediocrity in one's companions breeds comfort with mediocrity in oneself. He demonstrates a servant's spirit by holding a curtain for David, explaining that serving others is how people place value on one another. The Second Decision reads: "I will seek wisdom."

David is thrust into the Battle of Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the Twentieth Maine, a rhetoric professor turned soldier who joined the army because freeing enslaved people was "the right thing to do," pulls David behind a rock wall amid carnage. Of his original 1,000 men, only about 300 remain, holding the extreme left of the Union line. Chamberlain gives David a tobacco pouch containing the Third Decision. When Tom, Chamberlain's younger brother, reports they are out of ammunition, Chamberlain refuses to retreat. He orders his men to fix bayonets and leaps onto the wall screaming "Charge!" The Confederates turn and run. The Third Decision reads: "I am a person of action," declaring that fear is an impostor and failure exists only for the person who quits.

On the deck of the Santa Maria on October 11, 1492, David discovers he can understand and speak the captain's language effortlessly. Christopher Columbus leads him to the crow's nest, points west, and declares he is sailing to a new world. After 19 years of seeking sponsorship, Columbus remains unshaken, insisting that truth never depends on consensus. When mutinous officers demand the voyage be reversed, Columbus argues that turning back means certain death. He explains that most people fail because of "an undecided heart": The committed heart searches for solutions while the undecided heart searches for escape. The Fourth Decision reads: "I have a decided heart."

David arrives in a secret annex in Amsterdam on October 28, 1943, where eight people hide from the Nazis. Thirteen-year-old Anne Frank, the only person who can see David, articulates a philosophy of chosen happiness: Every morning she decides to be happy, and gratitude transforms deprivation into perspective. She recalls her father Otto Frank's lesson: Watching balloons rise, she asked which color would go highest, and he replied that it is not the color that matters but what is inside. The Fifth Decision reads: "Today I will choose to be happy."

David is transported to a tent at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, says he came for two reasons: to dedicate a cemetery and to meet David. Lincoln identifies forgiveness as the most important action he takes regularly, redefining it as a gift to be given rather than a reward to be earned. When David asks whom he must forgive, Lincoln answers: "Yourself." He tells David that Ellen, Jenny, and God are not mad at him and urges David to stop being mad at himself. Lincoln then delivers the Gettysburg Address as David watches. The Sixth Decision reads: "I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit."

David's final destination is a vast, mysterious warehouse. The archangel Gabriel, a towering figure with golden hair and white wings, reveals that the shelves hold "all the things that were about to be delivered just as a person stopped working and praying for them." Gabriel calls this "the place that never was." Among the contents is a formula that painlessly removes tonsils in six hours; David, whose daughter needs a tonsillectomy he cannot afford, breaks down. Gabriel shows him a photograph of two children bearing the names David and Ellen had chosen for future children they never had. He declares David the last traveler and instructs him to study one decision at a time for 21 days and share the decisions with others. The Seventh Decision reads: "I will persist without exception."

David finds himself in a future Dallas, where a janitor at a massive arena recognizes him as "Mr. Ponder" and credits David with building the arena. Inside, a speaker tells a story identical to David's own and retells Chamberlain's bayonet charge, arguing that one decision can change the course of history. The speaker describes a "hedge of thorns," divine protection for those destined to make a difference, and tells David, "Until you have accomplished what you were put on this earth to do, you will not, you cannot, be harmed." Driving through the city, David discovers landmarks bearing his family's names, including a children's hospital and a building labeled "PONDER INTERNATIONAL." He returns to the same interstate, hits the same icy bridge, grips the wheel, and remembers the hedge of thorns. Then there is nothing.

David wakes in a hospital room with Ellen and Jenny at his bedside. A doctor explains he has a severe concussion but no broken bones. After his family leaves, David concludes the journey was a dream, but he writes down the key phrases of all Seven Decisions on a notepad. A nurse brings a bag of personal effects. Lifting it, David feels unexpected weight. He reaches in and removes a small tobacco pouch: navy blue, threadbare but handsome, with gold eagle-engraved buttons and crossed swords embroidered on the flap. It is Chamberlain's pouch. The journey was real.